Health Ministry to borrow funds from HRD for AIIMS
7 May 2018 5:31 PM GMT
New Delhi: Struggling with fund crunch, the Health Ministry has decided to borrow funds from Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry for completion of four new AIIMS, which were announced by the NDA government in 2014.
The four AIIMS that would be established with the help of fund borrowed from HRD's financing arm Higher Education Funding Agency (HEFA) include AIIMS-Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh), AIIMS-Nagpur (Maharashtra), AIIMS-Kalyani (West Bengal) and AIIMS- AIIMS-Mangalagiri (Andhra Pradesh). All the four AIIMS are to be established at an estimated cost of about Rs 6,000 crore.
According to the official, the estimated cost for construction of AIIMS is Rs 1,011 crore, AIIMS-Nagpur is Rs 1,577 crore, AIIMS-Kalyani is Rs 1,754 crore and AIIMS-Mangalagiri is Rs 1,618 crore.
The establishment of AIIMS in Nagpur, Kalyani and Mangalagiri were sanctioned by the Union Cabinet in 2015 under the Prime Minister's Health Protection Scheme, while decision over setting up of AIIMS in Gorakhpur was approved by the Cabinet in July 2016.
According to sources, construction work has already started in all the four AIIMS. "Works like the construction of boundary walls, the design of institutions, budget estimation, etc have been completed in all the four AIIMS and tenders for further construction work have been floated."
However, according to experts, the low budgetary allocation to the PMSSY is hitting the construction work at AIIMS as this year's allocation has been reduced from Rs 3,975 crore to Rs 3,825 crore.
The sources further maintained that the Health Ministry would soon move a proposal to HRD Ministry seeking the loan from HEFA to expedite the construction work of all four AIIMS.
"Given that HEFA has been set up to give a boost to infrastructure developments in higher education institutions, the loan amount would be utilised for the development of AIIMS – a key institution of medical education," an official justified the proposal.
The official further added that the proposal in this regard has been finalised and would be discussed in the next meeting of the HEFA, which is scheduled in this month.
The official further added that the loan amount would not be the liability of any of the four AIIMS as it would be paid back to HEFA by Finance Ministry in either by increasing the allocations for AIIMS or directly to the funding agency.
Notably, the Union Cabinet had approved HEFA in September 2016 as a special purpose vehicle with a public sector bank (Canara Bank).
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